Although I absolutely love the world design and map connectivity (a very well built souls-like), I cannot honestly recommend this game due to its unbelievable difficulty spike in the very late game. I can only imagine how many others have felt the same sort of frustration as me when, after some great adventure and skill-improvement in the early and middle game, the late game bosses can take away 1.5-2 slots of health in one hit. More frustrating is the fact that one mistake in a boss fight (in the late game) can easily lead to death due to chained damage (almost as if the bosses were designed to hit the player at least twice once a hit lands). Very little sense of achievement can be obtained from this game, unlike in most other metroidvania/souls-like games--not even mentioning the bizarre equipment economy where early game armours are almost as good as it gets, since late game armours don't really have that much more defence.

Again, I feel very sorry for this game since it's got some of the best world designs in 2024, but the bosses felt way, way more punishing than they should be. Hell, I had a much easier time with the Elden Ring SotE DLC than with this game's late game bosses, and that should say something about how much non-fun I was having.

I refunded this game after less than an hour. It missed the mark for me in about every category.

I like pixel action rpg's... Children of Morta is one of my favorites, along with CrossCode, Scourgebringer, Hyper Light Drifter, etc. This should have been right up my alley, but it was not.

Graphically I really don't like it. I don't know if it's the colors or the scenery design or what it quite is, but I found it ugly, uninspired, and boring as opposed to retro and charming like most other pixel games I play. The whole thing just was not pleasant to look at while playing.

Story wise, I only played a bit but I found it bizarre, and not in a good way. What should be intriguing narrative elements were just weird, like someone was tripping and just firing off random neurons when they wrote it. Maybe they pull something together later in the story, but I was not interested in the least in what was going on.

The action here is very challenging, so players should be aware of that. This is highly punishing combat, much more so than most games in this genre. That might be a positive for you, so your mileage will vary. Every enemy is deadly, not just bosses. Dodge timing is obviously essential, and from what I played the window seems short. The most annoying part though is that the dodge roll has kind of a brief but annoying cool down that matches the enemy attack timing of some enemies so if you make one mistake, you end up locked in a timing sequence where you just keep getting hit over and over. I really didn't like the combat in this game overall. Also the attack animations as far as I can tell cannot be interrupted, so that doesn't help either.

Dying is punishing also because you lose half your money every time you die, so be prepared for some frustration with that.
On the good side, I will say that at least they made save spots somewhat frequent so you aren't losing actual progress when you die, but as I said you do lose half your money and you will die quite a bit in this one unless you are very, very good.

Overall I really didn't like anything about this game. I rarely refund, but this was absolutely no fun and I was never going to play it. If you really like the highly punishing combat and get into the graphics, then maybe it's for you. It's not a bad game, it's just not a game for me and I wouldn't personally recommend it.

if Dark souls and hyper light drifter together and an great blend of the two